The Flower-Hat Festival
(Hanagasa Matsuri), which takes place in YamagataPrefecture,
is known as one of the four largest events to take place in the Tohoku area.
The festival takes place annually in August.

The cry of the dancers in the parade, 'Yassho!Makkasho!',
and the spirited beat of the hanagasa-daiko drums can
be heard during the festival. It is one of Yamagata prefecture's symbolic summer events
and draws over a million visitors.

For a week from August 5th, dancers wear hanagasa
hats with artificial safflowers on them (the safflower being Yamagata's
prefectural flower), and dance along the main streets
(for about 1.2km) of Yamagata
city.

The Hanagasa Ondo song, which is sung as 'sorotasorotayo' etc., derives
from the 'dotsuki' song, which was sung in the Meiji
and Taisho periods in the Murayama area. The basic
style of dance is 'typical Japanese dance', however,
nowadays the advent of dances for men has changed the form of the 'buyo'. Moreover, elements from Westerns dance forms are
added, and the new dance forms are slightly different.